For those who either (A) believe Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 represents the pinnacle of browser design, heralded as being not only the greatest browser of its time, but of all time, leading to a general malaise towards Firefox 3 and 3.1 Alpha, IE7 and IE8 Beta, and Chrome Beta, or (B) are forced to stick with IE6 because of compatiblity issues, work policy, or any other of a handful of reasons preventing you from upgrading, then Google has good news for you.

Recognizing there are still users who surf like it's 1999 (yes, IE6 was released in 2001 but that wouldn't have set up a song reference, now would it?), the gargantuan search company has been hard at work rewriting Gmail's code base to make it more friendly for IE6 users. This means that if you have the latest IE6 updates from Microsoft installed, you should now be able to enjoy previously unavailable features like colored labels, group chat and rich emoticons, invisible mode, AIM integration, Gmail Labs, an updated contact manager, and remote sign out.

Now if only Crytek would upgrade Crysis' code base so the game would run smoothly on our GeForce 3 TI500 videocard, we'd all be happy campers.

Windows Live Hotmail’s 260 million users worldwide can look forward to a multitude of new features that were recently unveiled by Microsoft. Hotmail wave 3 promises a speed boost of over 70% during sign in, and will enable dynamic storage that will grow at a rate of 250 MB per month. Microsoft is also reportedly working to address the user interface problems which have plagued the service since the roll out of wave 2. Hotmail users currently have the option of picking between the well loved “classic” or the “full” user interface which reportedly suffers from a low adoption rate. This low adoption rate has kept the classic version alive, and made it difficult for Microsoft to roll out new features. Hotmail wave 3 looks to merge the layout of the “classic” with the functionality of the “full”, an approach they are hoping will finally please everyone. This is something that is desperately needed to help attract and retain users currently considering competing services such as Gmail or Yahoo. Improved integration of Live contacts, calendar, and instant messaging help to round out the initial batch of leaked features. The press release doesn’t make any mention of the long rumored POP support or any Skydrive integration, but hopefully these features are still in the works. No public beta has been announced yet, but the “coming soon” headline suggests it probably isn’t that far off.

Are you a former or current Hotmail user? Will these new features keep you with the service or send you running back? Hit the jump and let us know what you think.

CRN recently reported on a research from internet security vendor Marshal that found out of the 622 users polled 29.1% admitted to having purchased items through spam emails.

I seriously hope this was just a particularly ignorant group of Internet users. Okay, now hear this; Buying stock through spam email amounts to lighting a match to your hard-earned cash. There is no magic pill to make your penis bigger or make you better in bed. Buying crap through spam encourages spammers to spam more. In other words, don’t do it! Those of us with a clue will thank you, if we don’t cuff you first.

Brett Favre going to the Jets has given New Yorkers plenty to chatter about, and according to AOL's fourth annual email survey, many of them might be doing it through email. Either that or they're working really, really hard. The survey shows that 62 percent of people check their work email accounts on weekends, and of all the respondents who took the survey, 55 percent of New Yorkers said they are addicted to email communication. By comparison, the national average sits at 46 percent.

"As technology continues to advance, we begin to rely upon it more and more," email productivity expert Marsha Egan said in a statement. "The constant connectivity offered by email and PDA products has people logging on so frequently that they don't have time to do anything else."

Lest anyone dispute that the internet is serious business and email addiction is a real problem, New Yorkers are being offered help to cut the digital chain. Egan, CEO of EganEmailSolutions.com and author of the eBook 12 Steps to Curing Your E-Mail E-ddiction (clever!) has offered to let New Yorkers and residents from other high addiction rate cities join her 12-step program this month for half off.

Unlike other kings, spam king Edward "Eddie" Davidson decided that he didn’t like his new royal domain at the minimum-security federal prison in Florence, Colorado. After serving five weeks of his 21 month sentence his Royal ‘Spamness’ hopped a ride with his wife when she came to visit.

"He jumped in the car with his wife," said Will Cochenour with Lakewood police. "When they were leaving, he forced her in the car, brought them home and left after a change in clothing.” Davidson was last seen Sunday afternoon in his wife's 2006 silver Toyota Sequoia.

The U.S. Marshals are leading the search, with help from FBI, IRS and the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force. This time however they are sure not to take him back to Club Fed, but somewhere with a bit more security, and you can bet he’ll be in for a longer stretch of time too. This is providing that one of his spammed subjects doesn’t run into him first and tar and feather him. While this would make it a great disguise, it is sure to remove hair coming off (ouch).

If you are out looking for the spam king, be sure to imagine him without his royal accoutrements as pictured below.

A man of ordinary sanity doesn’t need sophisticated e-mail filters for egregiously unconvincing messages from someone lodged in a war torn African country, informing the recipient of how the sender miraculously found him, of all Homo sapiens, and a deal worth millions awaits him. But, unfortunately enough, perfectly sane people do fall prey to such messages, and don’t fare too well against the slightly more plausible fake eBay and Paypal e-mails either.

eBay and its cognate company Paypal have tied-up with internet behemoth Google to immunize Gmail users from phishing attacks. Fraudulent e-mails, claiming to be from eBay or Paypal, would be purged by using DomainKeys and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). However, Paypal admits that the technology still needs some polishing. DomainKeys has been used for a while now and, in fact, most Yahoo Mail users might recall e-mails from some major domains including Paypal having a stamp of approval from Yahoo Domain Keys: Yahoo Domain Keys has verified that this message was sent by XYZ.com. All said, this is a good move.

Tip: If you want to be absolutely sure about your precious Paypal and eBay accounts, don’t ever click through to these websites from links embedded in emails, no matter how credible they might appear to your untrained eye. Also change your password as often as you can, preferably, as often as once a month.

In May 2008, McAfee set up 50 individuals from around the world with new laptops and email addresses and then had them surf for 30 days trolling for spam to discover “how much spam they would attract and what the effects would be, both short lived and long term”.

Every techie reading this is thinking the same thing, Well DUH, they got a crap load of spam and were really @%!#& annoyed by it. Really McAfee’s S.P.A.M. (Spammed Persistently All Month) Experiment amounts to pseudo news or a marketing campaign. That is not to say that it did not generate some useful data, but most of its conclusions are a no brainer.

Ars Technica reports on a case coming up in Connecticut, in which a fired CEO is taking his former employer to court for accessing his personal Yahoo account. The CEO’s former employee's access to his Yahoo account netted them over 10,000 e-mails which included privileged communications between him and his attorneys regarding his plans to sue regarding his firing. Given the recent ruling from the 9th Circuit Court that indicated personal messages sent via work equipment were off limits to search unless the employer had a policy of regularly accessing the equipment. It might seem a slam dunk for the fired CEO.

The New York Times seems to think otherwise saying that because he accessed it from a computer that wasn’t his own, and he left it open in plain sight to transmit company documents (a violation of terms of his employment contract) the company may have been justified in investigating further.

The turn out of this case may have an effect on the previous ruling, and might want to give you pause about accessing your personal email from work!

The University of Washington has developed a new tool called WebAnywhere that allows the blind and visually impaired surf the Web on the go. It turns screen-reading into an Internet service that reads aloud Web text on any computer with speakers or headphone connections. For the past month that WebAnywhere has been available, Bigham, has received inquiries from librarians and teachers who struggle to find the time to locate free software, get permission to install it and then maintain the program. They plan to continue to update the program and make improvements.

Many-a Tom, Dick and Harry must have cursed their parents for such ordinary christening skills after being turned down an email id of their choice – which includes their name – that has already been taken up. But Yahoo is offering a great respite from the cut throat world of e-mail id registrations by offering ids on two new domains, Ymail and Rocketmail.
Users can reserve their favorite ids on these two domains as registrations are now open. "We realized we needed to expand the universe of Yahoo mail," said John Kremer, head of Yahoo mail. Some of the popular ids on the new domains are on the block on eBay and the proceeds will all go to charity.